These comments were posted by Shefki on the WoW UI forum and I think they probably put the whole thing, from an addon author's perspective, in the clearest perspective I've seen yet (just my opinion)...
I guess you could say that I'm on strrike. If only in so much as I am no longer working on addons as long as the property issue remains up in the air. This is not about money. It is about the right to own that which I have created. If you don't believe that authors own their own works you can stop right here.
I have never asked for or received any money for any addon that I have worked on. I have never planned to do this. I am not a greedy person as the people in this thread imply that authors that disagree with this policy are. In fact there are a very small minority that even ask for donations and an even smaller number that charge outright.
If Blizzard can enforce the free addon requirement with legal action then it seems to me that they believe that addons are derivative works. Some of the people on the forums here believe that they do. I do not, have not and never will believe this.
If I do not own the rights to my addons then I am unable to set the license terms under which they are distributed. Be that free. Be that GPL. Be that BSD. In fact if this is the case all licenses are invalid. It places all addons in a very difficult legal position.
I work on TBag-Shefki which was forked by Talos from EngBags, which itself has had numerous authors. If the previous authors did not own their work, then my work on this addon is quite possibly not legal becuase they did not have the right to grant me this ability.
I work on PitBull and other ckknight addons from time to time which have donate buttons in them. These are not buttons which are sending money to me. The money goes to ckknight, and rightfully so. However, I cannot remove them. As a result, I can not comply with the policy and continue to work on these addons now that this policy has been posted.
At the same point I support other authors that wish to sell their addons or place donation requests, buttons, chat notifications, etc... in the game. I do not feel that any of these things are harmful to the addon community as a whole, even though I would personally never do them. I simply feel that the OWNERS of those addons have the right to do these things.
This policy has not and will not do any of the following things:
a) Increase the number of free addons. If anything the situation will stay the same, with only the paid addons disappearing as their authors abandon them and some authors doing free addons abandon them.
b) Decrease donation buttons as many authors have already decided to flat out ignore this policy in this regard.
c) Remove advertising from WoW as Blizzard has signed contracts for advertising on their website, battle.net (the "new" login system) and in their games.
The community is largely self policing, the backlash at Carbonite over their advert supported version would likely have run the course and it would have gone away. Those that cared would eventually have moved onto the free alternatives that have no adverts. Those that didn't like those alternatives would have done without (and the game is entirely playable without Carbonite et al) or would have bought Carbonite. Allowed to run it's own course I believe the advert supported Carbonite would have disappeared on its own. As such I feel this action was entirely premature on the part of Blizzard.
I hope that Blizzard reconsiders or at least explains their positions with respect to these issues so that the addon community can get back to producing addons instead of sitting on the forums with a bunch of people who in general do not understand the issues and just want free addons.
I however, can not comply with the policy as I understand it and must refrain from making these free addons that you feel you are entitled to at this time.
Maintainer of TBag-Shefki ~ http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-a...ag-shefki.aspx
PitBull Contributor ~ http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-a.../pit-bull.aspx
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